How to mask while painting tex?(and how improve ram perf?)

[endseason]

***updated solution at the bottom of the post

hello,
Im using Mudbox2009:

-How can i mask a part of the geometry while i'm painting a texture? i'm painting one side of an hand and it happens to paint some part of the bottom side too... i'm using 2 different paint layers to avoid this, but it's time consuming and not as effective as masking, unfortunately i didnt find any info in the help or other clues on how to mask properly.

-I use win vista 32 home edition on an acer laptop and i have 4 giga ram, i read i have to modify the boot.ini in order to properly use all the ram onboard, but i didnt find any boot.ini in my OS drive, i have visible hidden and sistem files.

thanks for the help.

***How to paint texture on a selected part of geometry:

1 - hold down V key and paint selection
2 - Press Shift+Ctrl+I to invert this
3 - Press H to hide the inverted area.
Thanks to Wayne Robson.

How to activate 3giga ram under Vista:

To Turn on the 3GB switch:
Right-click Command Prompt in the Accessories program group of the Start menu. Click Run as Administrator.
At the command prompt, enter "bcdedit /set IncreaseUserVa 3072"
Restart the computer.
To turn off the 3GB switch:
Right-click on Command Prompt in the Accessories program group of the Start menu. Click Run as Administrator.
At the command prompt, enter "bcdedit /deletevalue IncreaseUserVa"
Thanks to Darkghosty.

[Darkghosty]

I'll take the second question for 400 Alex :)

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb124810.aspx

that should explain everything you need to know about enabling the 3GB Switch (backup your old boot.ini of course)


As for the masking while painting i'm not at home and i'm fairly new to mudbox, but I think you can use the select faces brush to pick the areas you just want to texture. Not sure if you have to freeze them or just select the faces, sorry havn't gotten into painting much yet, still working on sculpting technique.

[endseason]

thanks for the reply,

PAINT: i tried all combinations using freezing masking etc but no one influence the 2d paint ,they only influence the 3d sculpt.

RAM: my prob is i don't see any boot.ini in my winVIsta root (using search), and my properties sayes i have 4giga, does it means MudBox already see them or beeing 32 bit Os i have in any case to activate?...

[steelsky]

Not that ive tried this... but can you create selection sets for different parts of the hand... and hide the rest of the model? just a thought

[Darkghosty]

oops sorry it was early in the morning and I didn't have enough coffee in me to answer your question properly ;) (ok really I was skimming and skipped over the "i'm running vista" part) hehe

To Turn on the 3GB switch

Right-click Command Prompt in the Accessories program group of the Start menu. Click Run as Administrator.
At the command prompt, enter "bcdedit /set IncreaseUserVa 3072"
Restart the computer.


To turn off the 3GB switch

Right-click on Command Prompt in the Accessories program group of the Start menu. Click Run as Administrator.
At the command prompt, enter "bcdedit /deletevalue IncreaseUserVa"
Restart the computer.

[endseason]

Not that ive tried this... but can you create selection sets for different parts of the hand... and hide the rest of the model? just a thought

well i searched deeply in the help documentation,i didn't find how to hide a part of geomtry while 2dpainting, the selctions\paint mask\freeze dont work while 2dpainting.

what i found is:

You can create paint masks to mask regions of your model when you paint using the Projection tool as follows:

* Paint a black and white image on a plane and export the paint layer, then load the image as a stencil. Use the stencil as a projection mask.

wich is not looking as a proper method, isn't it?
and in any case i didn't find what a " a projection mask." is .

thanks for the suggestions:)

[steelsky]

I dont have mud infront of me at the moment but im sure i did this the other day. Using the select faces brush, select the area you want to paint on, invert it so the rest of the mesh is selected, then im sure in one of the drop down menus ya can hide selected. I cant remember the hot key off hand.

If ya still cant get it working ill have a look when im back home at the weekend.

[endseason]

To Turn on the 3GB switch................


Thanks, I'm goin to try it later on and update u.
3 giga is the limit or depend on my ram setup?(eg i have 4 giga)

[endseason]

..... Using the select faces brush, select the area you want to paint on, invert it so the rest of the mesh is selected, then im sure in one of the drop down menus ya can hide selected......


Yes! it works, thanks, i dunno how, but i didn't see the hide option and in the Official Help I didn't find it.

Now ill try later to use this as mask workaround when painting.

thank u.

[Wayne]

A quick way of doig it is to:

1 - hold down V key and paint selection
2 - Press Shift+Ctrl+I to invert this
3 - Press H to hide the inverted area.

Thats about 3 key presses so not bad.


Wayne...

[Darkghosty]

Unfortunately outside of the 3gig switch, the only way to utilize all of your ram after 3gb is to upgrade into a 64bit OS. Honestly if you are going to be using Mud and are serious about it, I would recommend getting a 64bit OS. I'm running Vista 64 with 8gb of ram and I rarely use it all up.



Thanks, I'm goin to try it later on and update u.
3 giga is the limit or depend on my ram setup?(eg i have 4 giga)

[endseason]

Darkghosty: thank's mate, the method perfectely works.

Wayne Robson: thanks for the shortcut:)

(I updated the first post with these solutions in order to make it easy to find)

[Wayne]

..or you could just set a hotkey for the hide unselected like I have now and then its down to hold down v key, paint selection, hit hotkey. (I set mine to Shift+H btw.) :)

I dont think it can get much faster than that apart from nuetral interfaces. :)


Wayne...